viernes, 31 de diciembre de 2010

I am down in Cork spending a few days with my friends Philippe and Gianmaria, who have hosted me in their house for new year . So I promised them to bake some bread for tonight dinner, new years eye dinner. I wanted to be safe so I chose the olives and garlic bread I made recently. One of the best breads I've ever baked. But there is another part of me that always want to try new things and be very creative (too much sometimes) so I normally change even my own recipes.

When I went to buy this morning the bread flour, I decide to buy as well some rye flour to give more flavour to the bread. Not a big risk. Then I went to the olive shop and my eyes went straight to some black moroccan olives, so I bought them instead the greek style ones. Not to bad so far. Finally, I remember that this cyprus bread is made as well with one of the most popular and famous food from this island: halloumi cheese. Why not? I though. So, I was literally paying for the cheese in the shop when just in front of me there was a nice tin of hazelnut oil and of course I couldn't resist the temptation of buying it and using it instead of olive oil. So the result was this:

700 g white wheat flour

100 g rye flour

2 tbs quick dry yeast

12 g salt

400 ml water

50 ml hazelnut oil

150 g moroccan black olives

100 g halloumi cheese

10 g fresh mint

1,5 tbs mince garlic paste

The dough was very difficult to knead, as it was very sticky and moist, even though you can see the water it's only 56%. I think the olives could added some water and the hazelnut oil made it sticky. So I had to knead and leave it rest a few times before I considered it was ready. Then two times of a hour and 15 min fermentation. The dough worked well and doubled it size both times. Here you can see it in the tray before putting in the oven:

I am using as Lidia the water in a tray in the oven instead of the spray: for me it's easier than open and close the oven a few times. 10 min with the tray with water at 240º C, then I took the tray and let the steam out of the oven, and another 35 min at 190º C. The bread didn't grown up a lot in the oven, but I think it was because it did it before. During the time it was in the oven, there was a lovely and strong smell in the house, mix of garlic, olives and hazelnuts. After that time, I left the bread inside of the oven off with the door open for a few minutes.

Dark color bread, not big alveolus but soft crumbs, I find the combination of all the flavors very interesting. Strong from the garlic (even a little bit spicy), salty from the halloumi and olives and refreshing from the mint. Looking forward to put something on the top or dip it in a sauce or just olive oil

I used only half of the halloumi cheese, so while making the bread, because it was lunch time and I was hungry, and I love this cheese, I sliced the rest and grilled, placed them on top of scottish oatcakes, herbs, tomatoes and olives. Halloumi is the perfect cheese to be grilled (maybe together with the argentinian provoleta) because it has a high melting point, and it is even better if you do it in a barbecue. It has a distinctive texture, similar to mozzarella and has a salty flavour.

Today it's the last day of 2010, when this blog was born. I want to wish a happy new year to Lidia and Almudena, and to everybody who read us during the year. I am sure 2011 will be a better year, a annus miribilis, and it will brings more and better breads.

sábado, 25 de diciembre de 2010

Happy Christmas! Today I didn't work, as most of the people, and I have a really lazy day, not doing nothing, except for going for a walk, cook dinner and...bake a bread! And as Lidia but not on propose I baked as well a walnut and chestnut bread, although I think with no the same result. My bread didn't rise much and I think because I put to much walnuts and chestnut. Other thing that happened: the crust was to hard, the times were the same that I used before for this kind of bread but it looked that I overcooked it. Too crunchy. Anyway, the flavour was nice and I enjoyed the bread.

viernes, 24 de diciembre de 2010

Freezing temperatures in Belfast (I am talking about minus 13). Very cold, although very beautiful at the same time. The snow from last week is still all around, not going anywhere, although became into ice. But it is white christmas.

So we these temperatures we can not really do much outside and we really want to be inside

with your heating on. And with a tea, and something with the tea. And what better than a nice and just baked scones.

I made these scones using buttermilk for the first time. I have to say that I liked what I got: powerful aroma, something between yogurt and cheese; the dough was quite moist and not easy to work with, but the result was very soft and tender scones. I add this time some blueberries. Gives a nice flavor but especially a wonderful color. Most of the blueberries break after baking and spread the blue color. You can eat them only with your eyes. Judge yourself.

Ingredients:

450 g self rising white flour

100 g caster sugar

1/2 tsp salt

175 g butter

250 ml buttermilk

150 g fresh blueberries

I mixed the dry ingredients and the added the butter and mixed until the consistency was similar to breadcrumbs. Then I added the buttermilk and mixed well. you don't have to work the dough much but be sure that all the ingredients are mix well and the dough is even. I made eight scones with the dough, cut them with a glass, and brushed the top with buttermilk. Oven preheated at 220 degrees and baked for 17 minutes.

I couldn't help eating one. So put the kettle, made a nice tea and spread some butter on top of each half when they were still warm.

Just a perfect evening. Almudena, as you like scones so try this recipe or just add some berries to the recipe you already has.

lunes, 20 de diciembre de 2010

As I said in one of the comments to a Lidia's post, this week I felt to make some bread inspired in that beautiful and interesting part of the world, eastern mediterranean sea. I love this part of the world and especially the food, but also the beautiful landscapes, the history and the people. For that I need some mediterranean ingredients but as well some middle east ones. First ones, garlic, olive oil and olives, and for thesecond, mint.

I have lived and travelled many times to Greece. I can say it is one of my favorites places to go on holidays and to live, and I don't refuse the idea of living again there. This recipe has some of the basic ingredient of the greek cuisine, and it could be a greek bread, but this time I was inspired in another country: Cyprus.

I spent one month in Cyprus working there and it was a very good experience. Food is similar to greece but there is more influences of the middle east. the combination is superb.

This bread is called eliopsomi (lit. olives bread). There is a version called eliopita (lit. olives pita). But I wanted to make a load of bread, so I mixed a few recipes I had and add the basic ingredients for making a eliopsomi. And this was the result:

525 g super strong white flour

300 g water

1 tbs quick dry yeast

10 g salt

40 g olive oil

140 g black olives

1 tbs fresh mince garlic

4 g fresh chopped mint

I found last week in a delicatessen shop in belfast called Arcadia this super strong flour from Hovis. I never used a very strong flour (this one has 12.8 g of protein) and I want to know how much affect the result. By the way, in this shop sells sourdough baguettes, I tried one and I have to say I liked it. I meant to put more olives but I couldn't resist the temptation and ate a few of them.

10 minutes at 240 degrees with a tray with water, after that I took out the tray and the steam (and of course the kitchen fire alarm went on) and another 30 minutes at 200 degrees.

I have to say that this is probably one of the best breads I made or at least the one I liked more.

Very nice crust, very soft inside, olives, garlic and mint gave to the bread a nice aroma and flavor. I can't wait till the morning to put loads of things on top of it.

And yes, I used the oven as well to roast some chestnuts, i love them so i couldn't help putting them with the bread.

It might be a good idea to use a few left to make a bread with chestnuts. Any suggestions?

miércoles, 8 de diciembre de 2010

Finally I had the bread for breakfast today even though the ulster fry was a strong temptation.

So I toasted two slices and made a tea. In one of the slices I spread butter and in the other marmite (yeast extract). I never tried it before but last week I saw a documentary in BBC where they tried to make home made yeast extract: basically they kill the yeast with salt (one thing that bread makers try to avoid religiously every time they make the dough) and to help the process they heat up the mix, so the result is a dark brown and very (very) salty sticky paste, with umami qualities. It is usually eaten as a savoury spread in bread and toasts or to give flavour to stews as a vegetarian alternative to beef extract.

It was delicious with the butter, and interesting with the marmite, as even very thin layer was enough to give a very strong and salty flavour to the bread.

martes, 7 de diciembre de 2010

Finally a day off in Belfast after a couple of weeks. Very cold, all the city is cover in snow and ice, but it looks lovely. So I woke up early, had my bran flakes breakfast and hit the town. All morning and part of the afternoon doing some shopping and walking, what it means lot of money spent. But I enjoyed the day and I bought nice things, including some bread ingredients. And finally, after such a long time and missing it, I made some bread, first one in Belfast. Iunpacked my scale, the bowls and spray bottles and some flours I brought from Cork. The restof the ingredients I bought them locally.

I wanted to make a classic one, like my favorite pain a l'ancienne but as I had a creative day and after the last post of Lidia and Almudena, I decided to risk and be brave: loved the idea of apple and oaks bread, but at the same Almudena's cheddar cheese and mustard scones were very tempting, so, why not mix them both? And you have the result. I had to modify the recipe to make a bread, and as I didn't have to make some sourdough, I used dried yeast. Another modification was the mustard: instead of powder I bought yellow mustard seeds in Marks & Spencer. Here is the recipe:

50 g porridge oats

100 g boiling water

200 g irish apples

100 g water at 20 C

10 g dried yeast

350 g strong white flour

5 g salt

3 tsp yellow mustard seeds

50 g mild white cheddar cheese

some extra oaks for decoration

The process is the same Lidia used for her oats and apple bread. but I baked it for 15 min at 220 and then 25 at 190. the color outside was very dark I guess because of the cheese. And because all the ingredients, I think it didn't grow much but I am quite happy with the result: not big alveolus but very soft breadcrumbs, main flavour coming from the cheese but some sweatiness from the apple and a crunchy and very particular from the mustard seeds.

I tried it tonight but I want to see how is tomorrow morning forbreakfast, although it might have to wait as I

planned a ulster fry for tomorrow. looking forward to all that grease lol.

now let me know what you think about the combination but more important try to do it, maybe next time a little bit less of cheddar so we can appreciate more the flavour of the rest of the ingredients but despite of that the I think it is a nice bread.

miércoles, 24 de noviembre de 2010

Yeeeha! Here I come! A new version of Juan Carlos´scones. I used brown sugar and walnuts instead of raisins. And so we had yummy walnut scones and carne de membrillo for breakfast. Juan Carlos, thank you for showing Lidia how to make scones, and thanks to you Lidia, for those wonderful summer days in which we baked together.

viernes, 8 de octubre de 2010

I was quite busy lately traveling because of work and this has had an effect in my baking bread. I made a few breads since I come back from Spain but I didn't post any since then. So today I'm going to put one, and starting from the first.

As Lidia said, we took part of this course in Madrid, making bread with sourdough. Very interesting, we learnt a few things and made a bread each one. I wasn't close to my house either (even farther away than Lidia) so I went to my friends house, ask for permission to use their fridge and cook the bread a few hours later. The result, lovely, good enough as they bread didn't survive that night. The best compliment was from Pau, as he said it reminded him the bread he used to eat in France. Me, very happy.

Here there are a few pictures so you can judge. The recipe it is the same Lidia put in the previous post.

martes, 24 de agosto de 2010

After the big success with the pain a l'ancienne yesterday, i can't stop baking!. So after work today I wanted to try other type of bread so I check in Bertinet's book and I decided to follow his recipe for baguettes and already the white flour when I decided to experiment...very risky I'd say as I am kind of a beginner.

So looking in my flours I mixed kamut and bareycorn, both that I never use and decided to make the baguettes. Here is the recipe I used:

I mixed the yeast with the flour and then added the rest of the ingredients with the scraper until the dough was firm enough to work with it in the table. I kneaded for about 20min and the left it resting for an hour in a bowl cover with a towel. After this hour the dough doubled and then I cut it in four and rolled it in baguettes, left them again another hour resting, where they doubled again.

This time I baked them at home, so no steam oven so I put a tray with water and spray water before put the bread: max oven at 240 degrees during approximately 12 min. The result was a compact bread but lots of nutty flavors, great smell.

Next day the bread was ok (actually I still have one baguette left and after 4 days it's quite good) so I took it to work to make my lunch: the bread won lots of flavors and textures when I toasted, so I put it back in the oven with some steam for a few minutes. I filled it up with some ginger pork, rocket, tomato and caramelized red onion, having spread olive oil in the bread. I have to say It was a really lovely lunch.

lunes, 23 de agosto de 2010

Finally I made my own pain a l'ancienne...and I loved it! Everything was by the book and that made me very happy and proud of me. I understood all that things that bread makers say about the feeling of baking your own home made bread, especially the first ones. I watched it, touched, smelled, showed it to everybody and of course ate, but sharing with friends and family. All is gone by now and I think this is a good sign. Now I can't wait to bake more, have to have a little bit of patience or I will spend all my free time (and some of my work too) kneading, mixing and baking. I wouldn't mind thou ;-)

So the bread I decided to make today it was pain a l'ancienne, very interesting and I was looking forward because Lidia was telling lots of things about it: a primitive bread, not need to knead just mainly mix well to have a good consistency. But the long rest in the fridge over night it will bring loads and amazing flavors. Outside it is very crunchy and the inside soft with big alveolus.

Lidia posted here a recipe that she adapted from a spanish blog about bread called madrid tiene miga (madrid has cramb) to used with sourdough instead of dried yeast. press here to check the recipe in this blog, as it is the one I used for my bread. As I said before here in the blog, I had a small accident with my sourdough and I am now in the second day of making another.

I mixed the water with the water with 300g of flour using my scraper and leave it resting for 30 min as they said that the autolysis helps to work with the dough and you get a better result. After that time, I added the rest 80g of flour, the yeast and the salt, mix it well and leave it resting in the fridge for another 30 min, after that mixed it again with the scrapr and put it in the fridge all the night to slow the fermentation. This will make the bread more crunchy outside and with lauds of flavors (that's why we use iced cold water, to slow as much as possible the fermentation).

Next day, in my case 8 hours, I took the dough out of the fridge and brought it to work, so I left it outside for around 2.5 hours, so it doubled its size. I put the dough on a greaseproof paper and cut it with the scratcher in three part, giving them a baguette-ish size, not easy as the dough is very soft and you can really work with it. You have to put flour underneath and on top. I pre-heated the oven at 260ºC and put the doughs into it for 10 min at 250ºC and 20% of steam. I work in a restaurant and we have a good combi oven so you can play with temperatures and % of steam (from 10% to 100%) so I decided to try with 20%. After this 10 min I took out the steam and baked them for another 8 min with just 250ºC.

The result was a very good and crunchy breads, with bigs alveolus inside and an amazing flavor. Maybe the color was a little big dark for me, but it wasn't at all burn.

I can tell you that the bread is perfect for dipping, we ate most of them just dipping in olive oil. Perfect. Looking forward to bake more pain a l'ancienne, and use lidia's one with the sourdough.

One last thing. On july it was my birthday but as I spent 4 weeks working in dublin in a new restaurant opening I couldn't see some of my friends, so this weekend, Philippe, Gianmaria and Alessandro gave me a present: as they know I am baking bread now (and really enjoying it) they bought for me a book about breads and baking, bread matters, by Andrew Whitley. I took a look to the book last night before I went to bed, it seems to be very interesting, as it is not only about baking, recipes and techniques but it has a big first part about why to bake your own bread and not to buy industrial ones; then of course it has a very good selection of all types of breads and recipes. Thanks guys, I appreciate and be sure I will use it and bake some bread for you.

jueves, 19 de agosto de 2010

I know that japanese food is not really much relative with bread and this blog, but dan was this morning in a tv show, Ireland am, cooking a great dish, stir fry rice. I was with him in the studios, great experience. press here to watch the video. and try to do it at home! it's very easy and taste.

lunes, 16 de agosto de 2010

All day raining in dublin, summer is over in Ireland and autumn and winter is ideal to stay at home reading and making breads. After work I spent some time in a bookshop near the restaurant in city center and of course I bought two books: temptation is too big inside there. One of the books is a well know but I didn't have it: Dough - Simple Contemporary Bread by Richard Bertinet , nice book with very good pictures and a good introduction about how to make bread. Then a quite few recipes. Very interesting with simple explanations. There is a dvd enclose with the book where bertinet explains in a 30 min video how to make bread. Very useful specially for those, like me, who are very visual.

The second one I bought today is Bread by Daniel Stevens, from the River Cottage. I have to confess that I had no idea about this book, the author or the River Cottage, but they very interesting. River Cottage have different projects, courses, a local produce store of food and drinks, books and dvd, a canteen, all with a philosophy of self-sufficiency, food integrity, and consumption of local, seasonal produce.Take a look at their website. The book is impregnated with these principles. It has a good and big introduction about how to make bread, lots of practical information, including how to make a clay oven and a good selection of different recipes. All in a beautiful and very handy handbook.

Looking forward to read the books and practice some of the recipes but as I said before, now it's the time to do it as the cold and rainy seasons are coming.

viernes, 13 de agosto de 2010

lidia was here in cork for a week with eva and paula. we had a great time, visiting the island, lovely places like cobh, kinsale, killarney, etc, but we had time to cook and bake and to create this blog. So our main aim was and is to share recipe in the distance as we three live in different cities and myself in a different country, so we can put here attempts and doubts and discoveries and questions mainly about bread but also you will find some baking. And while sharing between us we can share with everybody else and enrich this blog with people who want to participate too. so do not be shy.

we made my sourdough, starting with strong wholemeal flour, and after 2 days the sourdough was crazy: double every 12 hours, millions of bubbles and overflowing the glass jar. So we decided to made a white sourdough so we fed it with strong organic white flour. i think this change didn't like it, didn't die but its activity is very slow since then. i m going to feed it today with strong wholemeal flour and put it finally in the fridge. and let's pray it is ok.

so as we said before, while waiting for the sourdough we made a couple of breads, using fresh yeast. the first one, the one i called lidia bread, was a strong flavour wholemeal bread. here is the recipe:

the bread has two fermentation of around 3 hours and then oven for 50 min, first 15 min at maximum temperature (in my oven it's around 140 celsius degrees) and the at 190 degrees. we put some water in a tray underneath the bread, and we wasn't able to spray the bread with water basically because we forgot to buy the spray bottle :-) but it came finally crispy enough.

so the result was a lovely and rich brown bread, during the fermentation the dough grew quiet well but in the oven we didn't get many alveolus, maybe because of the yeast, maybe because it has a high proportion of wholemeal flour or even because of the oven, as it was too close to the top inside of it. Nevertheless the texture and the flavour was unique. lidia promised she is going to try to make it again using this time her sourdough so i am really looking forward for her to make it and share with us. i am sure she will improve it.

and as the bread has only one destiny to fulfill, we all had dinner with it that night, and our food was enhanced with this powerful homemade bread. here you can see a sample with tapenade, semi sun dry tomatoes and feta cheese. it s true as well as lidia said the this bread get even better if you toast it. i m getting hungry again ;-)

jueves, 12 de agosto de 2010

And sourdough was born. It happened suddenly and unexpectedly. Yes, we had all the conditions and tools but we didn't expect such a quick result. We were prepared to be feeding our mix of flour and water for four days, but after the first one it was already there. Bubbling, growing and spreading that incredible flavour. It was almost ready but it was too soon, we had to have patience and not try to make bread from the very first moment. Our head was finally stronger than our feelings: deadlines must be respected. This is something that making sourdough bread teaches you and it's one of the best gifts this experience brings to you.

Sourdough Connection. Three friends in three different parts of the world, Madrid and Granada in Spain, and Cork in Ireland, linked not only by friendship but also by willing to share breads, and bread recipes and experiences and even more (don't worry, everything will be about cooking). We have to say sorry to Almudena, one of the three, because she doesn't know yet. But she will.

Next step will be the birth of the first bread. While waiting for the sourdough to be ready, we tried baking some breads using fresh yeast (Polish, by the way) and mixing different flours: first one, spelt, wholemeal and rye.